Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 63: Victory in Japan
**********************************
The unknown weapon is radiant lightning, a devastating messenger of death, which turned all the members of the Vrishni & Andhaka clans to ashes. Their whitened bodies became unrecognizable. Those who escaped lost their hair & nails – as if eaten by insects. Pottery shattered without cause, birds turned white. In a very short time food became poisonous, the lightning subsided & turn’d into fine ash
Vyasa
Flight of Eichmann
The air is cool and night is coming.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain dazzles
Heinrich Heine
As Messerschmitts motor thro’ morning sky
In their desperate efforts for safety,
One weary man with yet wearier sigh
Looked low upon dear burning Germany;
No sun, no birds,
Just smoke, just hate, just hell,
No more those mystic words, no more Der Fuhrer’s spell.
Down there… a soldier saw the plane
& wish’d that he flew within,
Instead, manhandl’d off the train
By avenging Konstantin,
Black memories flood-boiling brain,
That scar brought back the sin…
For what this slug did to his Dosia
He drew his knife & slew Gerhart Buscher.
Up there… Eichmann went on in flight,
Touch’d down by sultry port;
By dead of night, with nerves afright,
He boarded a small boat,
For distant Buenos Aires bound, diamonds about his throat.
Barcelona
May 4th
1945
VE Day
nurses with level eyes, & chaste
in long starched dresses, move
Amongst the maimed, giving love
Patricia Ledward
Round Fence & Barley, Altham & Burnley,
Bonfires ablaze, day spreading fine & fair,
Towards Pendle’s shepherd solitary,
Sylphs escort joyous mafficking on air;
Gleeful Sumners,
Free from their weary load,
Join the festive numbers flocking to Manny Road.
T’was the greatest of street parties
(Since the Golden Jubilee),
Flags of all the Allied contrees
Fluttering in victory,
Fun, feastings & festivities
As life’s resurgency
Spreads colours lighting up those party hats
Worn both by peasants & by diplomats.
They’d suffer’d War fer six rude years,
Life’s problems growing plump
Thro’ tides of tears, thro’ childish fears,
Dead sons & Tommy’s stump,
The Sumners battled on… young Maggie rubs her baby-bump!
Burnley
May 8th
1945
Death of a Reichsfuhrer
evil:
by me & to me –
squelches inside me
John Rodker
There is a scent of lilac in the scene,
The birds are twittering, how sweet the song,
Hosts of soft buds lighten the valley green,
Bloom, birds & bees float back where they belong;
Some scrawny, short,
Schutzstaffel Mongoloid,
No longer mustache sports, shav’d smooth to truth avoid
“Are you Himmler?” he deft defies
Gentle interrogation,
When stripp’d & search’d, the doctor tries
A small dental inspection,
Dull glimmers prise the narrow eyes,
Beacons of decision…
Crushing a small capsule of cyanide,
This secret death namore his teeth shall hide.
The Fowler died & with him went
The sad wyghts of Wansee,
Whose wails had sent the innocent
Unto that twisted tree,
Where they would hang from countless nooses’ cruellest misery.
Lueneburg
May 25th
1945
Death of Basho
Burning my house to keep
them out, you sowed wind. Hear it blow!
Soon you reap
John Beecher
The messenger sprinted across the sand,
Baring the loss of the Yamamoto,
Before the noble lord of his command…
As Basho’s senses stirr’d by Bushido;
Unsheathing blade,
Taut fingers grip’s shark skin,
No longer, now, afraid… he drew his charges in.
Cheeks grubby rubb’d rouge-powder red,
Reflected the bloody glow,
Flaring upon each soldier’s head
When sever’d from it’s torso…
Surrounded by his loyal dead
It was his turn to go –
Smiling the gravest grimace, Seppuku,
Across his side his father’s sword slow drew.
Dragonfly thron’d on lotus claw,
Sitting by bonsai tree,
Intestines pour, white waves of gore,
Honour’d Hari Kari!
Escorts the soul thro’ mystic realms of encloak’d in chivalrie.
Mount Shuri
June 21st
1945
Okinawa
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow
Ernst Lissauer
The greatest armada in history,
Far from Hawaii’s indecorous day,
Tho’ besieged by swarms of Kamakaze
Deem’d nothing but the, ‘Fleet That Came To Stay;’
Each fit GI
Surged forth victorious,
All-times supported by his forty carriers.
From sanguine path to rocky ridge
Defenders heap’d in piles,
Foxholes, fatigue & foliage,
Rallentandoid lizard isles,
The Japanese prepare the bridge
From life to death, stockpiles
Of poison wide swallow’d, down cave wall slides,
Those wasted souls, so many suicides!
A man survives, his poison weak,
His head a sobbing strain,
So took a peak, “your name,” throat-creak
“Chiyo…” “are you in pain?”
“I’m not…” come, let’s surrender, all this suicide’s insane.
Saigon
July 15
1945
A New Bomb
Westward the course of empire takes its way ;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day
Bishop Berkeley
Carefree strolling thro’ the Sans Soucci,
Poetgarden of the playboy Kaisers,
Relaxing by the royal Jungfernsee,
Stalin deeper strategies devises
For Molotov’s
Superb post-conflict plans;
Schloss Cecilienhoff’s grand gathering of clans
Conjoins occidental chieftans
Together, tongue-tied, in cheer,
Those truth-charged comments of Patton’s
Barge free about Truman’s ear;
“Why should we stop, when damn Russians
We could, too, also clear!”
The Allies seem distinctly divided,
Cautiously all converses conguided.
With Poland strangely ink-shaded,
A time for frankness come,
Truman traded glances, chaunt said,
“We have forgeth new bomb,
Intended to smite low Japan,” fresh devils beat the drum.
Potsdam
August 1st
1945
Royal Awakening
I wished to die last night. I wished to die.
But then I feared, for I was alone,
The darkness seem’d to me an ocean high
Inger Hagerup
Calls for unconditional surrender
Emanate from a stately Potsdam room,
Tojo pleads, “Terms too harsh, Lord Emperor…
The nations honour vital as her doom.”
Majestic, “No!”
Then Hirohito sigh’d,
“The time has come to grow, too many sons have died.”
While Tojo slid away to brood
At the Yasukini shrine,
The Emperor explor’d his mood
With a glass of Saki wine,
His vision ev’ry vista view’d
From Saipan to the Rhine;
Events & forces spiral from control,
A broken fortress at an empires fall.
He sent out deep meditations
Upon his fastest steeds,
“Fly, fly my sons, fly to Russians,
Fly to the Swiss, the Swedes,
Let peace rush round the world once more as water does the reeds!”
Tokyo
August 4th
1945
Nuclear Dawn
The bomb burts like a flower,
& grew upwards under the sun.
And men stood far off, & wondered
Angela M Clifton
On flexing orthoptic Truman insists,
Despite Japan’s offers of perfect peace,
B29 whines thro’ dense morning mists,
A break in the clouds… the new bomb’s release;
Their mission done
Men turn & bank away,
Flash brighter than the sun washes th’Enola Gay.
Nippon’s fair skies were ripp’d apart
By an awesome sphere of fire,
Hotter than Sol’s star-boilant heart,
Birth of the new messiah,
No brush of Pre-Raphaelite art
Could paint this awful pyre,
As in horrific instant Balrog comes
Bestride ten raging trillion atoms.
Cometh the cloud of fungal shape,
No nat’ral law could halt
Its gruesome rape, a cityscape
Spectres of Hebrew salt,
Forms leprous, red-raw populace, or shadows in asphalt.
Hiroshima
August 6th
1945
Knockout Blow
O cry it across the chasm
Of ages, how we struck
In the atom’s smithy a sword
Stanley Snaith
The shockwaves of that terrible whirlwind
Tornadoes form, F5 morality,
But, come the dusts, Democracy hath pinn’d
His badges on the breasts of Liberty,
Close must the clash,
How can Japan fight on,
When in a single flash whole cityscapes are gone.
“This morning, sire, we were attack’d…”
“Which place?” “Hiroshima,
As of yet they’ve made no contact…”
Sadness fell’d the Emperor,
“How can this be, the city lack’d
For naught, I remember…”
Came later in the day the stunning truth,
When wept he for the old ones & the youth,
When holding head in trembling hands
He rued all he had done,
& understands the world demands
The setting of his sun,
“We must make peace, prepare the press, releasing my decision.”
Tokyo
August 6th
1945
(AA) Gl’Immortali VII
When any institution, whether it be an institution of government, or any other kind of an institution, embarks on an evil course, a man has a moral responsibility not to assist it in any way, manner or fashion to carry out any part of its program
Thomas Dodd
Assault of Hell
Each time the bugle shimmers
the dead, we like to fancy, stir a little.
We care for them still. They matter
Vincent O’Sullivan
Some say the descent to Hell is easy,
But not if harken’d from divinest spheres,
Fine-linen’d Jove drove his wool-white army,
Steps heralded by stythneaf trumpeteers;
Cerberus chain’d,
Crossing the Acheron,
A horde of angels drain’d the cess-pool Stygian!
The Nether Regions’ cack & piss
Bore Babababagorath,
Pleiades sever’d with a hiss,
Skulls & carcass clear’d from path,
The Daemon hordes defending Dis
Suffer’d the Holy Wrath,
Unleash’d by the Ark of the Covenant,
On to the Phlegethon those pure souls went.
Balrog detects Satanus face
Is laced with ancyent fear,
“Desperate race, at fearsome pace
The Hosts of Heaven near!”
Claw raises gourd… “But my side of the bargain hold I here.”
Pandemonium
Gates of Asgard
For lo ! the same old myths that made
The early ‘stage successes,’
Still ‘hold the boards,’ & still are played
Austin Dobson
As sword-force from east, from west, converges
Upon goliath show of matchless force,
What champion, from mass’d ranks, emerges
With diamond spurs, riding a plated horse;
“I shall surprise
The keeper of the bridge,
Heimdall rais’d up his eyes to that shining image.
As Arthur roar’d, the born again
King of his dominions,
Who drove the Goths from Aquitaine,
Slew the Irish Fenians,
Who drew the blade no mark could stain
That the Mycyneans
In desert forges of Arabia
Created, & then nam’d Excalibur!
Heimdall was slain, as down he fell,
Tho’ end flew rapid near,
He blew the knell, the warning bell
All Asgard there could hear,
Horn tumbling from his bleeding lips, blank look, a blinkless tear…
Bifrost
Last Battle
For there’s nae luck about the house,
There’s nae luck at a’
There’s little pleasure in the house
Jean Adam
The foe advancing thro’ the Muspellsheim,
Loki intrigues with Odin to fight on,
Demagorgon withdraws into Nilfheim,
Its beastly banqueting is almost done;
Valkyries sang
A rare Bragian lay,
For those in the Thrudvang’s magnificent array.
They stood upon that oak-fringed field
With powerful, bulging thighs,
A sparkling sea of swan-helm shield
& determin’d, narrow eyes,
The king of countless trumpets pee’d
Into the Aesir skies,
Slow darkening unto dead scenes of night,
Odin seem’d jaded in the faded light.
They took their places cross the vale,
Their meet with death had come,
In blew a gale, as slow as snail
Was heard the kettledrum,
The battlelines drew daggers, Uncle Sam unflagg’d his thumb.
Valhalla
Japanoeument
It has been raining, but the rain
is done & the children kept home
have begun opening their doors
Robley Wilson
From a jubilant Americana
Departed Hino, snugly nestl’d upon
The back of an eagle, whom together
Sent by Sam upon one final mission
From leg to leg
They’ll reach an Asian peak,
Some Fire Dragon’s egg firm gripp’d by sky-steed beak.
They flew to where the foe did dwell
As an egg drops with a crack
A Dragon steps out of its shell
At once went on the attack
A rush of talonries pell mell
That broke the Wyvern’s back
& with a roar of fiery hurricane
The Kraken slipp’d beneath the blazing mane.
As Bishamon made mendicant
How humbly, he, entreats;
The arrogant turn’d suppliant
When life’s dream life defeats
We bend to beg benevolence, calamity entreats!
Mount Fujiyama
Humble Aggressor
You are the only vow I keep,
A name I do not name, an oath
I will not take, but shall not break
Henry Reed
War, the province of kings to bring about
& the duty of the gods to end it,
Is betroth’d to peace, but peace with a doubt,
For chance the mere nature of her gambit;
Eight words suffice,
Wood wisdom of the elf,
‘By war’s great sacrifice the world redeems itself.’
As seraph-winging victory
Made sail over Asgard seas
There subsided a fresh beauty,
Blossoming with birds & bees,
Thor’s e’er maturing son, Modi,
Sweeps weeping to his knees,
Arms rais’d, promises his fathers father,
“We shall be wise, always & forever.”
Bishamon becomes mendicant,
How humbly he entreats,
The arrogant soon suppliant
When life the dream defeats,
Bent to begging benevolence like whores on silken sheets.
Mount Fujiyama
Twilight of the Gods
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack
AE Housman
How gruesome is the Gotterdammerung,
Fought in the name of gracious Liberty,
Odin weeps for his heroes, dead so young,
& dabbing tears, flyting, turns to Loki;
“Wherefore art the
Armies of Hell?” a smile –
The enfant terrible turns back into Belial.
As flew away that treach’rous cur
In a cachinnating cloud,
Rose the call for his surrender,
Odin barks refusals proud,
Fanfaronading Valhalla,
Moon dons a blood-red shroud,
Whence from the skies rain stars & satellite,
The dense one slain & with him drains the fight.
As Michael, George, Zorya, Pyerun,
Ice King, Volodomyr,
Sam, Gwyddion & proud Gryphon,
Took leave of the Aesir,
Whose land & lives behind a rising ocean disappear.
Asgard
Satanic Stand
But you cannot see the real me
My face is masked with pretence and obedience
And my smiles tell you that I care
Konai Helu Thaman
By Geryons flank’d, & vile Barbariccas,
Blade of unholy fire in talon’d hand,
Midst Malebolge’s rolling bolgias
Satanus, with his firm, shall make their stand;
Tho’ forces thinn’d,
They Seraphim first foil,
With swift, sulphuric wind malignant & aboil.
Saint Michael at the Dragon flies
& chains the grand betrayer,
Jove flings starlight from divine eyes
At Mars, whom, in terror,
Drops to knees, flops, groans & sighs,
Always & forever,
His martial age seems over with the guts
Worm-oozing from a thousand bleeding cuts.
The Devil swivels in his seat,
Hits Balrog with a smile,
“Odin’s defeat total, complete
Death, treachery & guile,
& honour has been satisfied… Balrog, the promis’d file?”
Pandaemonium
Defeating the Devil
Lord, these are Thine! With soldierly tread
Without a tremor they go their way,
Singing a hymn they march ahead
Lucian Bottow Watkins
Perhaps a year, perhaps a century,
Swerv’d battle with many an inroad gored,
‘Til all those heroes of the heresy
Were dealt full low, now Heaven is restored;
But for two ghouls –
Balrog & Satanus,
Fed on the fat of fools, sporting abhorious!
Saint Michael, at the Dragon, flies,
& chains the grand betrayer,
Jove flings fine light from divine eyes
Toward first flesh destroyer,
Beneath which death-swipes groans & sighs;
Always & forever
The Age of War was over with the guts
White-spilling from ten thousand bleeding cuts.
Jove turns to his great enemy,
Whom of those great wings shorn,
“I once loved thee, but… no mercy!
Of Eden quite forlorn,
Ye shall be cast into the pit & there become unborn!”
Divinnia
Sukhavati
Heart of the Earth beat as one,
and all the winged creatures, creatures
of the waters and the land
Homeri Aridjis
Jove flung Satanus into his abyss,
The pure perdition of nihility,
Whose penal fires all pucker up & kiss,
The promised prince into lost memory;
The deadly jaw
Of some Venus fly-trap,
The Devil’s dying roar drown’d out by thunderclap.
With this the happy Gold Age dawns
For Adam’s race in raptures,
A seraph each of them adorns –
Affluent, voluptuous –
Then blows the hallelujah horns
As numbers numberless
Uprisen from the rivers of the soul
That flows thro’ time & flows thro’ one & all.
Tho’ men were once Neanderthals,
They’ll come to surf the skies,
When fate fulfills, our good angels
In all bright spirits rise,
O race of super energies! O dashing enterprise!
New Jerusalem
(AA) Canto 64: Cold War
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You in the West have a problem. You are unsure when you are being lied to, when you are being tricked. We do not suffer from this; and unlike you, we have acquired the skill of reading between the lines
Zdeněk Urbánek
Victory in Japan
See, Pahana
how we nest
in your ruins
Wendy Rose
As Nagasaki’s viscous one-two crow’d,
Subsides the violent fevers of world,
Across Missouri’s deck MacArthur strides,
For him the battle banners sadly furl’d;
His brood had brought
The safety of the Earth,
Full fiercely had they fought for lasting Freedom’s birth.
War brands a mark upon the slave
& hurls him to the slaughter,
Death pins a badge upon the brave,
Whose names are writ in water,
Fate carves respects into each grave,
Memorized forever…
Forever, ah! forever but to be
Forgotten like the Spanish Tragedie.
From Darwen to Acapulco,
From Budapest to Lourdes,
From Palermo to Tokyo,
From Ankhorage to Rhodes,
A whisper of sweet silence as the priesthood the scabbard swords.
Earth
August
1945
War is Over
a crowd at the gammon,
fair-bosomed women
& crowns being wagered all round
Seamus MacGriogair
The Alps felt the first frost-fall of the year,
A soft, white sheet to blanket all with snow,
Jean Francois look’d down from a higher tier
Upon the rooves of Briancon below;
With scarfless throat,
No spike, no pick, no rope,
Like some rough mountain goat he scamper’d down the slope.
By underwater mountain stream,
Crystal waters crisp & clear,
Jean descended as if adream,
Startl’d herds of roving deer
Sent scattering by friendly beam,
Then as the inn grew near,
He thank’d his god, his land, his libertie,
Cursing the name infernal of Nazi.
He steps into ‘Les Montemar,’
Life lazes at a pace,
Walks to the bar, “Stella Artois…”
“Huit francs…” straight waitor-face,
“Huit francs! Huit francs pour un Artois, monsieur c’est un disgrace!”
France
September
1945
Meeting the Parents
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home
Nathaniel Cotton
To the vale twixt Pendle & Hameldon,
Carlton Dillinger rail’d his Christmas leave,
Stept into an alien environ
Where terraces thro’ chimney forests weave;
Ah! there she stood,
Like some broad from the farms,
Countenance calm & good, their cherub in her arms.
She led him thro’ those slummish rows,
Humming with community,
Where cloth cap, cobbles & torn clothes
Hardest work’d for Victory,
Upon the front door-step stood Rose,
&, behind her, Charlie,
Glowing in his grand-paternal summer,
“Yer may be a Yank but yer a Sumner!”
Despite six years of hardship pass’d,
Christmas found the Winners,
War’s awful blast finsh’d at last
&, to top their dinners,
“I’ve bin ter Flossy Bennets fer a pound o’ bananas!”
Burnley
Christmas Day
1945
Two Mothers
My mum makes us the world
as wide as the world
and as small as the circle of her arms
Ana Sampson
“We’re shackin’ up mam!” sez Maggie Sumner,
Rose gave a joyous blessing with her tears,
How handsome was this Sergeant Dillinger
If only she could turn back thirty years…
…& then… bombshell,
Love-bubble dissipates
“Butt Mam, prepare y’sell… we’re livin’ in the States!”
They pledge their troth at Saint Mary’s,
Honeymoon by Morecambe sea,
Then a tayle for childhood fairies
Very far from family,
Maggie drives past countless dairies,
Carlton points at a tree…
“I used to climb that as a boy!” he said,
His white farm-house cresting the mount ahead.
Rita’s life-reason, ripest pearl,
Returns to her by car,
Her senses swirl, who is this girl?”
“Maggie, come meet mah ma!”
“Well aint ya girl just beautiful!” Maggie replies a “Ta!“
Jerkwater
1946
Jewish Homeland
At your bedside, I feel like someone
who has escaped too lightly
from the great hell of the camps
Elaine Feinstein
As when an absent husband’s footfalls near
The restless, sleepless bed & echo loud
All thro’ an iron house, when wives appear
As naked fields of pleasure to be plough’d;
The promised land,
With its people conjoins,
Hebrew at the news-stands bought by these brand new coins.
The pages of the Exodus
Mirrors to the modern Jews,
Those victims of witch-hunt purges,
Reviled for sacred values,
Having since the march of Titus
Wander’d Europa’s views,
Millennial persecutions endured,
Until the cause of all those woes here cured.
Anna Grunfeld got off the train
End of the torrid line,
To start again, despite the pain,
Beneath a pure sunshine –
Where after two Millenia Moses views Palestine.
Jerusalem
1948
Family & Friends
When press begins the battle-cry
That nation needs to unify
And for your country you must die
Julian Tuwim
Across the dusty bush the long ways wind,
Inside a bus young Danny thought of ‘things,’
His best mate, Slater, mainly on his mind,
The driver drawls, “Welcome to Alice Springs!”
White men mingling
With Aborigine,
Pass’d thro’ him spine-tingling homecoming energy.
He bumm’d a lift in Richie’s Ute,
Went hurtling thro’ the Outback,
Neath powd’ry wheels pink lizards shoot
As the tarmac turn’d to track,
‘Tween rusted shears & gnarly boot
They park’d by Slater’s shack,
“G’day,” says Bruce outstepping from the truck,
Dan shook not human hand, but shook a hook.
They spent the evening downing beer
& reminiscing Shane,
The stars appear, they toast a cheer,
“In sunshine, wind or rain
He ran those bastards ragged!” “That’s my boy!” pride hides his pain.
Australia
1949
Blood-Ties
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
By sleeper train the war-haunted Constance
Traverses southern plains of Germany,
A mind confused left miles behind in France,
His family but half a family;
One letter read
So much the folds were torn,
The man he thought was dead alive & all alone.
He steps in from the busy street
To see a portly butcher,
What moment when the boy shall greet
The man that is his father,
Max turns around, puts down his meat,
Sees another Stemmler;
“Guten Tag!” utter’d in broken German,
“Guten tag,” a pause, “Herr, I am your son…”
They close the shop & take a walk,
Four decades of suspense
Allay’d in talk, at this fair fork,
Two rivers confluence…
Aimee’s fair smile, Der Fuhrer & the death of innocence.
Donauwurth
1953
A Game of Ten-Pin
Turning my face to the north, I worked a wonder,
I made the countries of furthest Asia come
Bearing all their tribute on their back
Hymn of Amun
The Warsaw Pact has drawn the battle- lines,
America looks ‘underneath the bed,’
Searching for proof of KGB designs,
From now on anyone could be a Red!
Pledging belief,
Witchfinders bind the air,
Negroedom breathes relief, the hate channel’d elsewhere.
“Have fun!” call’d Maggie Dillinger
To her husband & his pal,
Coolest Choctaw from Croatia,
Porter down the hospital,
Boys high-five the happy driver –
The chubby-cheek’d Big Al –
Together them went roaring off to bowl,
The nickels toss’d, their team sheet pins the wall…
All was ultra-jingoism,
They shouted Ivan’s name,
Communism, lib’ralism,
Perhaps they’re just the same,
They bann’d him from the bowling club before he’d play’d a game.
Jerkwater
1958
Cuban Crisis
I know, of course, that straight counsel brings calamity,
But persevere, & cannot give it up.
I appoint the Nine Heavens as my witnesses
Ch’u Yuan
“Fidel Castro,” exclaim’d the CIA,
“Must be dethron’d, let’s train his exiled forces
& land them fully arm’d upon a bay
To bring this awkward chapter to a close;
Silos… palm trees…
Concealant camouflage…
“Good god, sir, what are these?” “Man, this ain’t no mirage!”
Fidel Castro inspects the strip
Glibly waiting warheadrie,
An act of supreme brinksmanship
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
On launch buttons asserts his grip
Averting World War Three,
For Mutually Assured Destructions
Temporalizes Man’s politicians!
Faced with the last day of its days,
Mankind solves its crisis,
Some harper plays melodic lays
My friends remember this…
Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis!
The Brink
1962
(AA) Canto 65: Lingerings
***************************
Sapper Bullen has been a reliable & hard-working soldier during his time with this unit. He can be given work to do without supervision. His whole bearing is good & if it were not for his decision to leave the army he could well have gained promotion
Robert Sandy
Maggie Dillinger
Know life is not what it seems
We strip the fat from the lean
And find the facts in between
Lebogang Mashile
Flying oer English fields… via Heathrow,
& Euston… same fields up to Manchester,
Moors around Rawtenstall skiffing with snow,
A strange sensation, home to Lancashire;
Drizzle-soak’d air,
Winds roaming all achill,
She aims a poignant stare, “Kids, that there’s Pendle Hill!”
Up Manny Road bi Shanks’ Pony,
Sees Trafalgar flats amaze,
Instead of tender history
Faded pockets of past days,
But jesting with her family
Invokes old jokes & ways,
The bungalow housing her mam & dad
Soon full of booze, soon riotous, soon mad!
Mam rocks her latest grand-child, Bern,
“Most folk don’t give a toss,
What people earn’s their main concern!”
“Aye, & the bleedin cost,”
“These days,” pipes Dad, “the neighbours would prefer us to get lost!”
Burnley
1965
Last Soldier
I have been studying the difference
between solitude & loneliness,
telling the story of my life
Richard Jones
The one-man War of Hiroo Onada
Comes to an end one honour-bursting day,
Wielding his war-flag at the surrender,
His sword still sharp, his hair now gushing grey;
With high-held head
He leaves a life behind,
Scores of unsoldier’d dead, the last lad of his kind.
Stepping into another age
He could hardly recognize
Fierce teenagers, crime waves a-rage
& women painting their eyes…
The sacred land wears new image,
Severing ancyent ties…
“Where is Japan? What devils walk the street?
Did we give up our pride with our defeat?”
He stood at the hurricane’s eye,
Twas alien indeed,
Noise drown’d a cry, the world flasht by,
At such terrific speed,
The lonely sole survivor of the empire’s fallen breed.
Tokyo
March
1974
Vietnam
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly
Bruce Weigl
Contumelious, beastly, bull-brain’d war!
Plague of all nations, nigh on thirty years
A swamp churn’d up on the South China shore,
But now it seems the gory climax nears;
The stars & stripes
Pull’d down from every bole,
As into traps & snipes the GI’s constant fall.
A four-star gen’ral shook his head,
His reputation tatters,
How could jungle & paddy bed
Bless prestige as she shatters?
The power of his fair kindred
Less than that which matters,
For men instill’d with vigour & belief
Will always share the spoils of their relief.
The ghosts My Lai haunt men’s minds
The net is closing in,
An army finds it fights & grinds
Thro’ war it cannot win,
“Tell Washington its over,” scoff’d a captain quaffing gin.
Saigon
April
1974
World Cup
’Twas a present from the Dad.
I kicked it yet I worshipped it,
How strange a priest it had!
J. Milton Hayes
It seems mankind has found a safer War,
Better for conducting trials of nations,
Congeal’d, tarsticky pools of blood no more,
Just a ball & its country’s champions;
Gladiators,
With trident-studded boot,
Thousands of spectators stood breathless as they shoot.
Four years have pass’d since that great day
When Muller stunn’d the English,
Each Dutchman seem’d a new Pele,
A penalty to finish!
But puff’d-up by patriot bray
The Germans accomplish
A goal, & then another, turns the tide,
The final whistle hails a nation’s pride.
Max Stemmler bellows with the crowd,
Tho’ now an ageing man,
Proud to be loud, proud to be proud,
Beckenbaur in the van,
A golden globe is held aloft, the game had gone to plan.
Munich
July
1974
Imperial Soldier
I pass through trials all the way,
With sin and ills contending;
In patience I must bear each day
Hans Adolf Brorson
The very walls of Royal Priam’s town
Could not defy mi father in his prime,
Ennobl’d by a duty to the Crown,
He went to police the war-zones of his time;
Wild libido,
Good-looks unstoppable,
While mano e mano his ruck undroppable.
Pops travel’d out to Portadown
& on to bandit country,
Thro’ Crossmaglen & Beleek Town –
Where the latter’s pottery
Has won itself global renown –
Then on to Silvertree –
“Take down that tricolor!” his sergeant’s shout,
“No sir!” dad sens’d a sniper roundabout.
“Are you refusing an order?”
“Yes, sir!” Mi Dad replied…
Whose officer, an hour later,
Was dropp’d dead by his side,
“His common sense saved Bullen’s life, court
martial is denied.”
Northern Ireland
February
1975
Casualties
Let the storm that raves about us,
By our faith be kept without us;
Let us from our troubles cease
Joseph Gostick
A tip off & a farmhouse factory
The co-op mix – almonds, fertilizer,
Diesel & sugar – the British Army
Are forced to act, growing ever wiser,
Three hours they threw
Bricks thro every window
No trigger traps there blew, the order came to go…
Mi dad’s best mate stepp’d oer the sill,
Stood upon five hundred pounds,
That in an instant him did kill,
Mi dad to his best mate bounds,
Whose body bits lay strange & still,
In pieces thro’ the grounds;
& weeping terribly picked up a hand –
The coffin fill’d with naught but bags of sand.
Beyond blood, but bath’d in that blood,
The funeral becalms,
Mi father stood, a salty flood
Of tears did drench his arms,
Sad moment when the soldier’s life begins to lose its charms.
Huddersfield
July
1975
Hometime
But the key to the city
Is in the sun that pins
the branches to the sky
David Bowie
Dad’s final Christmas sporting soldier’s boot
Spent back in Belfast, dreaming of Burnley,
Far from these towns him paid to troubleshoot,
Impatient miscreanted vileynie;
With Santa’s hat,
Beef-butty & mince pies,
Aloof, alone, he sat, sad on the steepl’d rise.
While Pops watch’d streets for terrorists,
They sat & scoff’d their stuffing,
Sang Cath’lic carols nice & piss’d
While father supp’d on nothing,
Thinking, ‘I should be an artist
On a marlb’ro puffing,
Instead of handling steely killer’s gun…’
Right there & then he knew his tours were
done.
Well, they offer’d him promotion,
But he’d made up his mind,
No more “BULLEN!” bloodshed sullen,
Outlook redefined,
He caught the boat to Liverpool & left the lads
behind.
The Irish Sea
May
1976
The Last Reichsfuhrer
O God our Maker, give songs in the night
through the long watches of hope,
Till the shadows flee away
Eric Milner-White
Pearl searchlights comb the auld walls of Spandau,
Mann’d by Russia, th’Anglo-Saxons & France,
A point in time that is forever now,
Last firmament of a grand alliance;
Hospitable,
To strangest hermitage,
Solitary eagle squats in an iron cage.
Withdrawing from the living hell
Of a nightmare wax’d absurd,
Hess chooses shewing silent shell,
Weeks pass by without a word,
Holding his captors in a spell,
Like a lilting songbird;
For thro’ his soul melts runisch mysterie,
He was der Fuhrer’s friend & deputie!
The door slams shut, sweet midnight nears,
The Twentieth is come,
Counting the years, a rain of tears,
Saluting to the drum,
Tho’ slipping to senility, fidelis ad urnam!
Berlin
1981
When Mavis met Tommy
Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour ;
Improve each moment as it flies !
Life’s a short summer, man a flower
Samuel Johnson
Tommy Sumner shuffl’d with the old dears
Into the mini-bus outside their home,
The driver sets off to three rousing cheers,
All off to idle by the Irish foam;
An old penny
Was won within the hour,
Claimd by bingo Betty, first to spot the tower.
They book’d into a B&B,
Tour’d the same old streets & sights,
By-the-sea was far too windy
So they tram’d along the lights,
Then all the ladies left Tommy
For chips & early nights,
So he took a walk ter’ Winter Gardens,
& sat on the seat of Mavis Johnston’s…
“That’s my stool!” “Sorry, love, dint know!”
They hit it off at once,
Warm talk’s fair flow to long ago,
Rich in reminiscence,
When nights ran Earendillian, vermilion suspense!
Blackpool
1997
(AA) Canto 66: Millennium
**********************************
Grim was it in that dawn to be alive
Except to those who like their mornings bloody
Sagittarius
Epiphanies
How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another’s will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought
Sir Henry Wotton
There is a wonder in a scented muse,
Once tasted nothing earthly may compare,
Where else may such diverse sciences fuse
In such wondrous exultations of air;
Accepting how
This music moves to me,
“A poet am I now, a poet shall I be”
I bloom’d as springtime gladsome grows
In effervescent beauty,
Kissing yellow-centr’d yarrows,
Bringing orchids harmony,
The skylark sings as high swallows
Swoop gay & merrily
Oer meadows pepper’d with chrysanthemum,
Michaelmas daisy & wild marjoram.
There grew a garden in the heart,
Where sweet a songbird sings,
Oerwhelm’d by art, where would I start
Midst all these wondrous things?
So off I went to libraries where poets sit with kings.
Portsmouth
1998
Tradition
Of all the streets that blur into the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Jorge Luis Borges
I set foot forth upon the the day of fools
With aging suitcase, page-wet library,
Retiring from the system & its schools,
Determined on a path of poetry;
O secret course
Toward an unknown goal,
Sensing an unseen force was stealing thro my soul.
As our lives are like river
Carving causeways to the sea,
From the trickling streamlet sliver
To ocean’s immensity,
Off I stepp’d, with heart a-quiver,
Fill’d with antiquity,
Not knowing for two decades & a half
T’would take for me to carve a Golden Calf.
Phrenzies pursued, oft fuell’d by wines,
Waltzing with poetry,
This mind designs ten thousand lines
Offer’d in fealty,
To Clio, Lord Apollo & sacred Calliope.
Bognor Regis
2000
Troubadour
What racks can bind, or what research unveil
The soul, with flesh encompassed as a mail
Of proof, impervious, save to God alone
Nicholas Thorning Moile
I flew to Salzburg & a land unique,
Breath’d in the Berchtesgaden fairytale,
The Residenzmuseum at Munich,
& Dachau, where I heard the phantoms’ wail;
From wyrd Landsberg
The ghost of Herr Hitler
Leads me to Nuremburg, heart of Bavaria!
At Jena, amid wooded heights,
Admir’d I Napoleon,
Left Leipzig under dull street lights
For Colditz schloss – & on
To Berlin with her stirring sights
Of grandeur not long gone;
The imperial park of Sans Soucci,
The Maifeld… & that villa by Wansee!
I felt a young conquistador,
Calm Clio was my guide,
Her haute couture was mine, de jure,
Oer poet’s they preside,
Those minxing muses whom with synching scenes our dreams provide!
Germany
Summer
2001
Al Qu’aida
You will be treasurer of my heart,
Although my body must depart
Learning and science to attain
Adam De La Halle
There is a new threat to the Allied world
Outwith Europe, from the Afghan passes,
After the mats of morning prayer furl’d,
Soldiers of Jihad tend to their classes;
What power reign’d
Thro’ their spirit’s guide,
“Paradise can be gain’d thro holy suicide!”
By cruxdom number’d they nineteen,
Full frenzied & factitious,
Stalking the airways as unseen
Servants of the ambitious
Al Qu’aida, what does this mean?
What outcome their wishes,
To penetrate the land of Liberty
& channel hate into a strange fury?
Turning off the television,
They chatted man-to-man,
Holy mission! The decision
To instigate the plan
Was theirs & theirs by birthright like the death-flights of Japan.
Florida
September 9th
2001
Airjackers
Your son has come,
To answer your call.
In my mouth and in my blood
Ali Squalli Houssaini
As the cabin crew filter’d the coffee,
Five Arabs full of fervour’s brave intent
Rose from their seats, rather nonchalantly
Stepp’d up the incline of the plane’s ascent;
“Can we help you?”
The stewardesses sought,
How deftly sharp-blades drew red lines across the throat.
Blood gush’d from each jugular gash,
Happy mood alters abrupt,
A flash of angry shouts abash,
“Do nothing else we blow up!”
Against the lock’t cockpit men crash,
More threats of death erupt,
The panicking pilot opens the door,
Two air hostesses dying on the floor.
Stern-faced, head-banded Arabs cry
Above the engine whine,
“No-one shall die!” their dreamy eye
Seem’d bless’d with the divine,
As distant thro’ the windows rose the Manhattan skyline.
Flight 11
September 11th 2001
08:40
The North Tower
I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No.
Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares
Joanne Gobure
How vastly the capital of the Earth
Outrolls her concrete sprawl without abate,
World-famous monuments peep from its girth –
Liberty’s torchlight & the Empire State,
Dwarf’d by the twins,
Unrivall’d gemini…
The tragedy begins… a child points to the sky….
Peering upon the ants below,
From the hundred & first floor,
She froze dolicapaxan slow
As the wings of death did roar,
Life flashing by before the blow,
Then she was there namore,
Caught in Dantean incineration
As on all sides surges devastation.
Struck edifice stood like a rock,
Then… shook with a shudder,
Its aftershock spreads block-by-block
“There’s been a disaster!”
“Man, a goddam jet has flown into the World Trade Centre!”
New York City
September 11th 2001
08:47
In the Field
That’s not how I suddenly become a poet,
By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene,
Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus
Persius
From musing-grounds around old Rusthall Wood
I dallied home, poesis almost spent,
A spot of morning strolling to the good
My house-mate serves up pleasant refreshment;
A spotted tart,
A pot of sweet Earl Grey,
“A film’s about to start!” “Which one?” “The Longest Day!”
Niave young lads switch’d on the box,
Wise men crank’d up the volume,
Twin Towers crumbling into rocks,
Twas a new & brutal doom –
Casting such global aftershocks
From a dusty mushroom,
Wide-surging thro’ a world of steel & brick,
Straight from some seventies disaster flick!
What image splash’d across TV
From Sky to Channel Four,
We sip our tea, hesitantly,
Rebaptized evermore,
Are Men condemned to ever live their lives in fear of War?
Royal Tunbridge Wells
September 11th 2001
21:21
Pentagon
I heard my throat deep from the well,
The wolf my brothers’ summon spell
Invok’d, did hear & fled to Hell
Abbas Beydoun
The roaring Boeing honed in for the kill,
Al Quai’da’s chosen warring weapon,
Ignoring White House & Capitol Hill,
Preferring this five-sided bastion
Symbol of might
Beside the Potomac
A simple morning flight becomes a bold attack.
It crash’d into a helipad
& slid into a building,
The fuel rich tanks of the Jihad
In violent ‘WHOOM’ exploding,
From Moscow to Islamabad
On the spot reporting –
A universal moment on TV,
Not one attack, not two attacks, but three!
This firestorm fell fury daubs
The scene in smoke-swabb’d paint,
Thro blue, white strobes, assail’d earlobes,
Sev’ral survivors faint,
Behind, a crawling officer, arm cast up as a saint!
Washington
September 11th 2001
09:46
George Bush
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
An aide whisper’d in the president’s ear
“Sir, there has been an incident…” struck dumb,
‘Ministrations defining moment here,
Time to honour his nation’s faith now come
Stands Cowpoke George,
Subject of so much scorn,
A chance for friends to forge & image be reborn.
For like Thatcher, Mussolini
& his father before him,
Votes can be won thro’ victory
& healthy jingoism,
He spoke with calm assurity,
“It is our country’s aim
To bring all these terrorists to justice
& blow them sky high off the Earth’s surface.”
His ear whisper’d into again,
“They’ve hit the Pentagon…”
By private plane, fighters in train,
He dash’d to Washington
By crazy zig-zag course, “Sir, there might be another one.”
Somewhere over America
September 11th 2001
09:57
(AA) Canto 67: Stormclouds
********************************
High on the hilltop lets raise our ramparts
Carry out faces over the shield rims
Raise up our spears, men, over our heads
Taleisin
Imperial Return
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
Edward Dyer
Three sailing ships swept thro’ a sunsunk sea
Then drift amid a mountain-armour’d bay,
Flying flags studded with the honeybee –
From anchors splash how calmly there they lay;
Unsheath’d the sword!
This thousand men of war
Rejoice as they are row’d toward the stony shore.
Stoic, upon the scything stern,
Stood the mortal soul of France,
Whose soldiers sing for his return
With an awesome reverence –
Whose choric voice & eyes that burn
Commands them to advance,
Each rough cheek pinching as they pass him by,
Adoring adulation makes them fly.
They march’d, a musical parade
Cheer’d by the underclass,
While north they made a white cockade
Silently watch’d them pass,
Then raced away to warn the Royalists who slept in Grasse.
Cannes
March 2nd
1815
Grave News
It was so old a ship – who knows, who knows? –
And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain
To see the mast burst open with a rose
James Elroy Flecker
Beneath the ancyent moon of Austria,
Generals, emperors, statesmen, royals,
Gather’d ’round the grand map of Europa,
Are wolves who wait the diseas’d eagle’s spoils;
Squabbling rabble
Discuss incessantly
The murmuring babble of high diplomacy.
All talk cut short as from outside
There peel’d a thundering boom,
The doors dramatic’ly flung wide
By the soul sunken in gloom;
Twas Metternich, whose slick, slow glide
Now claim’d the centre-room.
“Gentlemen, Genova sounds warning grave,
The Corsican Ogre has rode the wave!”
As the atmosphere grew colder
The hand of Russia’s Tsar
Grasp’d the shoulder of his soldier,
Britannia’s battlestar,
“Tis up to you to save the world – once more, m’lord, to war.”
Vienna
March 7th
1815
British Reaction
I am already on the way,
& follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed
Henry King
The morning sun scatter’d cross the Solent,
A tranquil & yet deadly waterway,
Where slept the ever watchful instrument
That kept the Gallic conquerors at bay;
Ye mighty fleet,
Queen of the oceans vast,
Thy duty ne’er complete while France still decks a mast.
In the barracks mess at breakfast
Sat the half-dress’d soldiery,
Freddie Johnstone yells joyous blast
Tosses broadsheets flying free,
“Old Boney has broke free at last,
Fink he’ll face our ‘ookey!”
As the room rose the whole company roar’d
With thoughts of gaining glory by the sword.
The word spread round like raging fire,
“Great & glorious news!”
Time to retire thoughts of empire,
Pack up those marching shoes,
For once again brave Englishmen must battle with the blues.
Portsmouth
March 10th
1815
Portent of War
Not far or near
Can mounts or rebel waves
E’er make me full of fear
Paramahansa Yogananda
The winds of change have dwindl’d to a breeze,
The first Napoleon resumes his reign,
Renounces the lawless Bourbon decrees,
A man more powerful than Charlemagne;
Surrounded by
A court of men he made,
Who with a weary sigh prepare for war’s parade.
“All Europe declares war on you!”
“One man becomes one nation!”
“So be it! If peace shall not do
Increase the realms taxation,
A million muskets, Marshall Soult,
Treble the conscription,
Arm all the gendarmes, secure the borders,
Allez mon marshalles, await my orders.”
The city cool’d as blue moonlight
Shone with the tinkling stars,
The eagle’s flight span cross the night
To sweep across old Mars,
Who shone a little redder with the blood of coming wars.
Paris
March 22nd
1815
A Very English Affair
at that very first hour
the destiny of us all
began to be fulfilled
Jorge Barbosa
The Duke of Richmond look’d down on his ball,
A fete of English suave & gaiety,
Ladies holding darling captains in thrall
Amidst a swirling, twirling company;
Fast thro’ the door
Burst the Prussian Muffling,
To struggle cross the floor huffing & a-puffing.
Wellington took him to one side
& frown’d as the Prussian spoke,
Then an aristocratic glide
Swept them thro’ the dancing folk,
Deepest anxieties did hide
Neath noble, smiling cloak…
“Richmond, do you have a map anywhere?”
“Yes I do…” They stole up the ballroom stair.
“By Gad! That man has humbugg’d me!
What nerve to choose Charleroi –
Thus the army must speedily
Converge on Quatra Bras…
& if not there then Mont Saint-Jean must dowse his martial star.”
Brussels
June 15th 1815
22:00
Battle’s Eve
that is why you remind me of music
If this song were to end
I’ll continue marching, leaving sound-tracks
Kyle Louw
The Emperor reach’d the inn tward sunset
Lord of a footsore, rain-sodden army,
Viewing lush fields he never would forget
Rippling yellow in the shallow valley;
“Dare he stand here?
The battlefield so small!”
A stench of secret fear now permeates his soul.
Thro’ Heaven waltz’d the Evening Star
As four French cannonballs fly,
The grand, full-throated voice of war
As sixty roar in reply,
Thick blood puls’d thro’ his throbbing scar,
“These English want to die –
Have the troops bivouac here for the night,
First light shall prove their stomach for the fight.”
Thro’ starry climes the Eagle flew
Oer each moon-sprinkl’d cloud,
Then swoop’d down to the farm Caillou
Close to the cheering crowd,
For thro’ them rode an Emperor, the father of the proud.
Maison du Roi
June 17th 1815
21:00
Imperial Breakfast
you have so much of confidence
and trust it with a brilliance
you are kind-hearted
Hasmukh Amathalal
The Marshalls receive the summons to dine
Breaking the night’s fast with Napoleon,
Whose smile, as soft as Corsican sunshine,
Settles their spirits, they know they must win;
“Still he stands fast,”
Spew’d thro’ some chew’d-up fish,
“Then I have them at last, these whore’s bastard English!”
“Attack at nine!” “It can’t be done,
The ground is as a quagmire.
I cannot move all my cannon
To the open fields of fire.”
“What do you think of Wellington?”
“Strong when well posted sire.”
“Nonsense, you’ve all been beaten by a dick!
This battle shall be but a child’s picnic.”
With certain generals he did meet,
Then parles with his colonels,
For something sweet he sate to eat
Plates of sugar’d mussels –
Guzzl’d down, gracef’ly upstood, “Tonight we sleep in Brussels.”
La Ferme de Caillou
June 18th 1815
08:00
French Optimism
The eyes of the owl
closed on the plain
of death
Juan Sánchez Peláez
How they march’d onto the field of slaughtersm
With music & banners to daunt the foe,
& the Emperor’s beautiful daughters
Wheel’d into position, row after row;
Plush cavalry
Mounted on fine horses –
In sight for all to see, the mighty French forces.
Along the front their leader made
The grand tour of inspection,
As tho’ his men were on parade,
Abundant with affection,
Steeping upon his cavalcade
Rapt’rous salutation,
“Before the sun sets we shall, together,
Help France rise more glorious than ever.”
He sat at a small deal table,
Down shone a burning sun,
“By a brutal assault frontal
We must take Mont Saint-Jean,
But first, to draw the reserves out, let us tease Hougoumont.”
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
11:00
Prussian Advance
Walking the mudflats,
I pass a stranger. We nod.
And leave it at that
Pat Boran
As cannonades echo for miles around,
Slowly, along those atrocious back lanes,
The Prussian hastens to the battleground
Thro’ marshland swollen by the recent rains;
Knee deep in mud
Blucher waves high his sword,
“Forwards, my men, ye would not have me break my word.”
Marching on a murd’rous ordeal
Men moved thro’ glutinous goo,
Took three of them to free a wheel
As weary exhaustion grew,
But with that great Teutonic zeal
Them close to battle drew,
Emerging from the woods by Saint-Lambert,
The bloodshed spread below them everywhere.
Napoleon gazed hopefully
Along the Eastern track,
“They could well be troops of Grouchy…”
“Perhaps, sire, Prussian black!”
“It makes no difference to us now, on with D’Erlon’s attack.”
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
13:30
(AA) Canto 68: Mont Saint-Jean
**************************************
A king is for glorious deeds, not long life
Magnus Barelegs
D’Erlon’s Attack
I belong to you and call you mine
like my mother whom I did not choose
but nonetheless love
Conceição Lima
As low, dense powder clouds drifted away,
The bands struck up, notes melting the mile,
Juggernauts launch, & slowly made their way
Across the valley in the same old style;
War’s theatre
Rips with the sounds of drum;
Rrum-da, rrum-dum…rrum-da, rrubba-dabba-dum-dum!
As mile-wide lines of skirmisher
Drive the keen sharpshooters back
From behind them flaunting terror,
Five thousand from front to back,
Pass into the smoke & sulphur,
Press glorious attack
Upon the British, ignoble retreat
Must to them come, & consummate defeat.
A blaze of muskets strafed the flanks
Flung out from La Haye Saint,
From cannon clanks ploughs, thro’ the ranks,
Balls of screaming iron,
Regardless, dauntless, of their loss, men joyously march’d on.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:40
Death of Picton
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, & short:
& done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it
Petronius
Below the ridge, in nervous ribaldry,
Gin rations allaying a real fear,
Ready to die, the Highlander stands steady,
Eyes on the crest, appears the Grenadier!
Fiannan roar
Defies the glide of France,
Whose tartan & claymore piped into an advance.
As driving on those men he led,
“At ’em you drunken rascals!”
A lucky shot pierc’d Picton’s head,
From his mount he slowly falls,
But still that regiment in red
Threw forwards musketballs,
As bayonets are thrust into the charge,
”Get into ‘em!” bellows their foul-mouth’d sarge.
Little do we know of courage
’Til battle’s lust takes oer,
With fearful rage our fight we rage
Altho’ we know not for,
To kill a man, be slain by him, grim sacrament of war.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:45
Scots Greys
O what is Death? ‘Tis life’s last shore,
Where vanities are vain no more!
Where all pursuits their goal obtain
Leigh Richmond
Lord Uxbridge watch’d the battle’s lethal course,
Observ’d the gravitas grown unsteady,
Spurr’d to face his fine phalanx of grey horse,
Order’d their sabers from rest to ready;
The bugle’s peel
Cancels all distraction,
Perform’d a perfect wheel, forth into the action
The earth-thumping hoofbeats propel
Centaurs of derring & dash,
Bloodstirring the Britisher’s yell
As into the Gaul they crash,
How many a gallant foe fell
Neath scything sabre slash
& the hooves of the stamping stallion –
Grave panic grips the forces of D’Erlon.
With the capture of their standard
Brave Frenchmen flee like sheep,
Fully routed or led founder’d,
Dead or afeign Death’s sleep,
While nigh three thousand prisoners lament the lives they keep.
The Fields of Waterloo
14:00
Sanguine Stalemate
I go up onto the rocky earth-hill summit,
Till my horses are sick with the effort;
My charioteer is poorly now
Chou South
Drunk on rum & bloodshed the Grey’s charg’d on;
No voice nor blast could halt the lusty heart
Careering round each small yet deadly gun,
Wreaking revenge for friends they’d blown apart;
Heroic fray,
Fought in that danger zone,
Skulk’d, safety, far away as panting mounts are blown.
He watch’d as tho’ struck by thunder,
A terrible sight to see,
Then cast the Polish Lancer
Against milling cavalry,
With the promise of no quarter
They spear’d the enemy,
Slaying spent stragglers with furious zest,
Oft times twenty lances punctur’d the chest.
The plain was litter’d with the slain
Like shrapnel from a bomb,
While fresh cocaine sped to his brain
He rode back to Rossome,
Scream’d, “Where the fuck is Grouchy?” & “Where are these English from!”
Rossome
June 18th 1815
14:30
Wellington’s Caution
He’d dreamt he was a shaft of wood
By axehead topp’d, his foes to fight
To chop off heads & branches smite!
Jaan Kaplinski
After such titanic surge of battle
The field lay taken by an eerie calm,
But for the musketry’s endless rattle
Rising from the blazing Hougoumont farm;
Across the ground
Ten thousand corpses strewn,
Aft’ that first frightful round e’en the stout-hearted swoon.
A young ensign upbraved the crest,
Peer’d into the smoky haze,
Saw tranquil horses, riderless,
On bleeding leg-stumps graze,
Watch’d silent, white & motionless
Whilst wounded Death’s knell raise –
‘Til BOOM! thro’ the air a cannonball cuts,
Punctures his belly, out trails white worm guts.
The ridge becomes a smoking pyre,
Armies turn to spaces,
“To dodge this fire we shall retire
Back a hundred paces!”
Breathing relief, that hot-spot left, war’s pain on strain’d faces.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
15:30
Ney’s Attack
I have seen in the hunt
The pulse of rent flesh;
Seen the fingers of Time
Mary Eliza Fullerton
Half-a-mile from the eyes of his master
Ney watch’d the scarlet enemy retreat,
Giving hordes of cavalry the order,
”Come claim the glory of England’s defeat;
In consequence
The Confederacy
Must offer no defence to French supremacy.”
Tween La Haye Saint & Hougoumont
The flawless Cuirassier,
His golden breastplate gleaming dun,
His horse-pistol & sabre,
Came on, came slow & calmly on,
Some sea-wave of summer –
A long, glittering line of man & ???
Emanating grandeur’s will to s!??
“Shoot at the horses!” came the cry,
Down fell many a steed,
A human sigh dwelt in the eye
Of our most noble breed,
Man’s heavenly companions dying hell-bent for his greed.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
16:00
Rocks of Empire
Weeping another’s death, my grief atones
No whit. All forms of human doom
Arouse but transient thoughts of joy or gloom
Jan Kochanowski
They stood about the shot-tatter’d colours,
Driven to the limits of endurance,
Defending their ground ‘gainst the warriors
Driven by the spirits of ancyent France;
Without a flinch
They took all France could throw,
Nor yield a single inch to the relentless foe.
Each wave of brave sabres withstood
By the savage squares of red,
Melting into the Belgian mud,
Courtyards litter’d with the dead,
Between each foam-fleck’d horseman flood
Descended deadly dread,
For black balls from BOOM-BOOMING batteries
Cut carnage in swathes thro’ the companies.
With each assault dwindl’d the foe,
Their dead litter’d the plain,
The weighty blow did drain & slow
Tho’ still they came again,
‘Til the last spectres of this ghastly danse macabre wane.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
17:30
Farmhouse Fall
The two God’s creatures
Fight odiously.
They fight vehemently
Gueorgui Konstantinov
With Wellington press’d hard to distraction
D’Erlons rallied remnants swarm round this farm
In the midst of a furious action,
Show contemptuous recklessness tward harm;
From shot-pock’d walls
The Kings German Legion
Pour’d streams of musketballs into the blue ocean.
As la rage steam-soak’d in despair
Hurls men at the bold defence,
Stone, cold fire of the legionnaire
Splutters to vanquish’d silence,
‘Twas such a murderous affair
The French claim recompense –
Bayonets plunge into wounded soldiers,
“Take zat for being such good defenders!”
On the key to the position
The Tricolor waved free,
The battle won! The division
Of Wellington’s army
Must soon be follow’d by the Brussels march & VICTORY!
La Haye Saint
June 18th 1815
18:00
The Killing Time
heart is dead, no longer is there prayer
on my lips; all strength is gone, and
hope is no more
Hayyim Nahman Bialik
The French advance their cannon down the slopes
& up again, where halting they commence
A constant fire, in which hot blaze lie hopes
Of victory & tigrish recompense;
Now is the time
When England’s best are slain
Cull’d savage & sublime under a silver rain.
As canister’d shells macerate,
Pulping flesh to mushy pink,
The Iron Duke now felt his fate
A-tottering on the brink,
No further minute could he wait,
No seconds left to think,
So marshalling all forces of the line
He fortifies the vital centre-spine.
As every man, & everyone,
Was taking turns to die,
Palladian the sinking sun
Diminishes the sky,
Brave Wellington gazed gravely on with grim, determined eye.
Mont St Jean
June 18th 1815
18:10
(AA) Canto 69: La Belle Alliance
**************************************
The next worst thing after a battle lost is a battle won
The Duke of Wellington
Echoes of War
Woman has two feet
To climb toward her dreams,
To stand together, firm
Chiranan Pitpreecha
Miltering from that stomach-searing stench,
Hooves thudded by each busy surgeon’s blade,
As battle’s grisly carnage, & the French,
Abandon’d by a cavalry brigade
Quite cowardly,
Bursting thro’ those wagons
Of wounded creaking free from death’s ruthless dragons.
On bolting thro’ the Namur Gate,
Grave panic spread like wylde-fire,
Fearful of the forthcoming fate,
For troops of the French Empire
Oft wreak revenge in rabid state –
Those dastards daz’d & dire,
Spread rumors rife, “We’ve heard Napoleon
Has promised two days pillage to his men.”
She gazes toward the rumbling sound,
Saw battles in her head,
She, wistful, found a spot of ground
& helpless there she led,
Not knowing if her William was wounded, well or dead.
Brussels
June 18th 1815
18:30
Napoleonic Sunset
I don’t know if the stars rule the world
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything
Fernando Pessoa
From thirsty throats shot a tremendous cheer
For France, the Emperor & Victory!
Faces contorted with pleasure & fear
Like some black Parisian tragedy;
Mountains of dead,
The screams, the smoke, the smell,
The dark, Dantean red that paints this trophied hell.
Ney gallop’d to his emperor,
Prussian shells fell on Rossome,
Face blacken’d with face & powder,
“Sire the time to push has come!”
“Fool! how can I manufacture
Men, where to pluck them from?
Back to battle, there do the best you can,
Spare not the efforts of a single man!”
To secure Plancenoit he threw
The Young Guard from his hand,
Then rode back to the inn to view
The battle’s prospect grand,
Sky painted black with evenfall, by smoke & ashes fann’d.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
18:45
Imperial Guard
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the blugeonings of chance
W.E. Henley
He led them upon the glorious way,
His soldiers, of the Middle, of the Old,
Once more handed the Fate of France to Ney,
More precious than his weight in Bourbon gold;
The grand guardsmen
March musically as one,
“Forwards my brave children, a Bruxelles mes enfants.”
They march’d with splendour’s cool élan
Onto the field of glory,
The power surging thro’ each man
To shape Europe’s destiny,
Brave bandsmen foremost in the van
Stirring strain’d melody,
They swept in solemn & savage silence,
Th’espirit-de-corps carv’d from deadly violence.
On march’d th’immortal sons of France,
Men who built an empire,
The eminence of their advance
Plough’d to a muddy mire,
Two columns paced into the fray straf’d by a galling fire.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
19:45
Routing the Guard
To the end they were brave
To the end they were faithful
To the end they were similar
Zbigniew Herbert
“Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Swiftly upsprung
One long, scarlet line of grimy faces,
With one thundering volley forward flung
Murd’rous musketry at twenty paces;
Death’s wind was blown,
Driving men to their knees,
Strange field of human corn all swaying in the breeze.
“Up Guards & at ’em!” Arthur cried,
& Wellesley’d to the murder,
Where brave blues stood fresh terrified
Of death by English slaughter,
The bayonet, coldly applied,
Adds to the disorder
A cowering coward yelps a wild shout –
As one the beaten heroes turn & rout.
“La Garde recule,” ” Impossible!”
“Nous sommes traits!” the cry,
Their spirits fell, broken the spell,
To France these Frenchmen fly,
So cruel & bitter tasting tears trickle from each proud eye.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
20:00
The Soul of France
Oh, noble grief in the verses free,
Which sound and resound so sincere,
Will you move the feelings of men
Migjeni
Sheltering in the centre of a square,
His loyal First view their leader blankly,
Who, with the terrible rage of despair,
Stand to save the honour of the army;
Outbreaths a sigh
Retiring in all haste,
He left his men to die as on the Russian waste.
Befitting the call of glory,
Steep’d in mystique ’til the last,
Like islands in a raging sea,
Screaming comrades streaming past,
Swarm’d by hussars & infantry
Fought they fierce & steadfast –
Freddie Johnstone pleads them to surrender,
Dead silence feeds the defiant, “Merde!”
“La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!”
Twelve cannon pack’d with case
Administer the coup de grace,
Death’s scythe swept thro’ the space,
The soul of the Grand Armee duly vanish’d from Earth’s face.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
20:45
Happy Meeting
Promise of hope, a bright spark for tomorrow,
That’s who the angel did say was to come;
How can this be when the world’s so uncertain
Bruce Levitan
Tho’ the battle won & Europa saved
Death doubles his efforts as night draws in,
The mortal right to mercy clearly waiv’d,
Frenchmen hack’d down in droves for kinsmen sin;
In joyous rows
Their vanquishers advance,
As Allied pincers close about the throat of France
They meet with a gladsome greeting,
Victorious embrace share,
“My prince, that was a damn’d nice thing!”
“Oui, mon duke, une quelle affaire!”
Their triumphant soldiers singing
Stormblasted thro’ the air;
For twenty years the misery of France
Full twenty years of bloody arrogance.
The simple north country farmer
Heard English lyrical,
Crept in terror from the cellar,
Paced his ruin’d castle
Stood forever at the threshfold of a famous battle.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
21:00
Battle’s End
How some that have died, & some they have left me,
& some are taken from me’ all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces
Charles Lamb
Lone rider cross’d the scene, grave duty done,
Counting the cost of his certain glory,
“Next to a battle lost a battle won
Is the worst thing any captain could see;”
The tears he cry
Whilst whispering wistful,
“I hope to God that I have fought my last battle.”
Mangl’d thousands cover the ground
Like a shipwreck’s rippling sail,
Some dreadful organ piped hell’s sound
While the wounded shriek & wail,
One stumbling, mumbling widow found
Beloved husband pale;
Shadowy ghouls sporting guns, helms & coats
Scavenge for booty, slitting gurgling throats.
Weary the Duke of Wellington,
Bright is the moon & blue,
He trotted on past La Haye Saint
Where one lone eagle flew,
Then glanced his last & turn’d his back on the fields of Waterloo.
Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
21:30
Broken Dreams
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years !
I am so weary of toil & of tears,-
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain
Elizabeth Akers Allen
How strange that any man escap’d alive
This sorry scene of carnage incarnate,
An epic pool of death in which connive
The sobbing phantoms of a sword-law state;
While bedlam shrieks
Faces shine bright moonbeams
Upon subfuscous freaks erupting amid screams.
As men bellow their Christian hymns
Or beg to end pain, be shot,
Others untangle scrambling limbs
From a stinking horses knot,
The chance of night’s survival slims,
No pennies for the slot;
When one-by-one, as wounded men expire,
Fell ever, ever quieter, Hell’s choir.
As in light sunrise increases,
Unfolds a tragedy,
Broken pieces, choking ceases,
As life’s finality
Still weeps across that field of foes with woeful witcherie.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 19th 1815
06:30
Splendid News
Every church sings its own soft part
In the polyphony of a girl’s choir,
And in the stone arches of the Assumption
Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The carriage thunder’d oer Westminster bridge –
Eagles poking proudly from it’s window,
Captur’d in the fight for Wellington’s ridge –
To wheel into Whitehall… the horses slow;
Grime-faced major
Brushes the guards aside,
Interrupting dinner, words bursting forth with pride.
“Great & glorious victory!”
Sang Percy to his Regent,
Kneeling upon a bended knee,
“My liberty to present
Twin colours pluck’d with gallantry
From a French regiment;
Representing Napoleon’s downfall!”
Three long hurrahs huzzah’d by one & all.
Trophies display’d to growing throng,
News flew round like lightning,
They skipp’d along awash with song
Singing, “God save the King!”
While wide across the countryside ten thousand church bells ring.
Saint James’ Square
21st June 21st
1815
(AA) Canto 70: Jihad
**************************************
King falcons of Britain, your chief song I fashion
Your chief praise I bear:
I’ll act as your bard, your judge
Your support, it befits me
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr
Revenge
How transient that lithe-limbed lady’s life,
stooping to sow seedlings, scorched by the sun,
her face plastered with mud and dusty earth
Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind
The Allies muster clumpetty replies,
Cluster-bombs bash, from stratofortresses,
Big-stinking paths, defenceless from the skies
Ground squadrons groan at their falling forces;
A fierce advance
Against the Taliban,
Who’ll take heroic stance, defending to a man.
Step-by-step the Allies struggle
Thro’ the rugged mountain bar,
Tho’ Taliban have fled Kabul
& battle-scarr’d Kandahar,
All the local warlords huddle
Around Bin Laden’s star,
Hiding in his protective catacoomb,
Glendower of the Tora-Boran gloom.
As every day gun-noises near
Capture draws on closer,
Fresh hopes appear, bereft of fear,
Cautiously Osama
Sped west to Pakistan thro’ the passes of Paktia.
Afghanistan
November
2001
Peace March
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
& give her to the god of storms
OW Holmes
They march’d en masse into the capital;
Made a peacehugging, socialist anthill,
Heavy-hearted with forthcoming battle,
Why would the world unleash war’s terror still?
From age to youth
Human majority
Choose not the dragonstooth of Hell’s hostility.
O world! sweet world! sweet world of mine!
&… billions of others,
Would we not wish a sun to shine
Upon a world of brothers,
Why would ye wish to hear the whine
Of our wailing mothers?
For surely cruel lessons have been learnt
When Prague fell & the streets of Poplar burnt.
I wander silent thro’ the roar
Rumtumbling thro’ the crowd,
“What is life for” “Make tea not war!”
The gentle clamour loud,
The later portions of my task with firmer thought endow’d.
Hyde Park
February 15th
2003
Invasion of Iraq
The ancient tombs lie thicker on the grass;
The new graves encroach even on the highway
Outside the city-wall there is no vacant ground
Tzu-Lan
Saxons have reach’d the beach’d Shatt-al-arab,
Where Tigris & Euphrates stem their flow
Scimitars sharpening for the scarab,
Amicus est tamquam alter ego;
The serpent’s head
Call’d the fight for heaven,
Wielding a gold-plated AK forty-seven.
As when a brave, young Persian Shah
Defied Queen Victoria,
The British Navy sails to spar
Amid the streets of Basra,
With better guns & battlestar
Marches desert soldier,
Joining opening batsmen at the crease
To end the wars with this more perfect peace.
He slipt away into the night
That man men call Hussein,
For from the fight if ye take flight
Ye live to fight again
Like Washington’s irregulars & Wellington’s young Spain.
Baghdad
May
2003
Bombing Madrid
Oh, bring not then the dread report of death,-
Of eyes to loveliness forever sealed,
Of youth that perished as a passing breath
Helena Coleman
Nine hundred & eleven days are pass’d
Since 9-11 thro’ world psyche tore,
Handsome Jihadis waking from repast,
Thrust fundamentalism to the fore;
This is Jihad!
A culture & a cause,
As out of Attobad codewords conduct the Wars.
Another routine, protein day,
As rush hour fast receeded,
“The Christian elite shall pay!”
Was warning wide unheeded,
Both ETA & the IRA
Truly superceded,
Horror striking thro’ the Spanish nation,
Ignite pack’d trains at Atocha station.
Within a week the cell is found,
Some dirty hideaway,
Arm’d police surround the plot of ground,
Young Arabs kneel & pray,
Then blow themselves to kingdom come as martyrs pass away.
Legures
March
2003
Regime’s End
A hawk’s eye
Penetrates to the core
On a hot afternoon
David Rubadiri
Pursuing the ‘most wanted’ deck of cards,
Two pictures caught, their lavishlarge mansion
Reduced, their father’s kingdom torn to yards
The focal point of the world’s attention;
Four-hour fire-fight
Odai & now Qusai
Are finally in sight, mark’d by the sniper’s eye.
Only the Ace of Spades remains,
The very ultimate goal,
First target of the Allied pains
Ten short minutes from his fall;
Namore the tyrant hydra reigns,
They’ve found him in a hole,
Without an army & without a plan,
Dishevel’d & ignoble… an old man.
They led up him up into the light,
Glanc’d he ‘cross the river
Where shines the sight, fabulous, bright,
Spinal spinning shiver,
Best of his golden palaces commandeer’d forever.
Tikrit
September
2003
Suicide Bomber
I will rise
with the soul of the earth
I will run
Moechtar Awang
As Al-Jazeera shows brave Muslims bleed
& Mosques of Leeds incite a deep passion,
Hasib abandons the young British breed –
Pop music, hedonism & fashion –
For Pakistan
Nursery of Islam,
For Allah, the Quran & elevate Imam.
“We are watchmen of the pure way,
Guardians of the martyrs,
Sons of brave Hossein Fahmideh,
Drinkers of God’s elixirs,
Death bringing to the USA
& all non-believers,
With weapons unassailable & good
Defending faith with our last drops of blood!”
On long flight home the martyr sees
Flowers cloud round heaven;
Customs a breeze, drops to his knees
At the railway station,
Life amplified for one young man plotting devastation.
Manchester
2004
Testamundi Imperatrix
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
A poet born in Burnley, who’da thought
Of such a thing – he’d try an epic too!
Completely independent & self-taught,
Finding his art’s traditions in the zoo,
His wild heart freed
Her white wings, to obtain
This Pegasus, this steed, his precious Sylvermane.
With herbal teas & verbal tricks,
Thro’ days of molten sapphire,
He fashion’d the Imperatrix,
His ode to Britain’s empire,
& setting in its closing bricks
He read it by the fire,
A wattle church, but now what cathedral
‘Cross mind’s eye darts, & starts with a battle.
First fourteen thousand lines were done,
Among them had reviv’d
Napoleon & Wellington,
In verses keen incis’d,
Melodic’lly, & phantasmagorically contriv’d.
Burnley
2004
A New Blitz
Why came I so untimely forth
Into a world which wanting thee
Could entertain us with no worth
Edmund Waller
As Londoners rose glorious & gay,
The thirtieth Olympiad was theirs,
Whose families were flung into the fray
As thro’ the tube the first explosion tears;
Entrusted tasks,
With bomb-laden ruck-sacks,
The citizen unmasks, the terrorist attacks.
They had bought a single ticket,
Rode from Luton to Kings Cross,
Like openers at the wicket
When the Ashes first were lost,
Men of faith & peace & cricket,
But noble & brainwash’d,
A sleeper cell awoken to their rage,
A lion-thought pacing a bitter cage.
The waking world look’d on in awe,
When will we ever learn?
Still dying for the sake of war
Man’s miseries return –
The filth, the fears, the hate, the tears, the boodshed & the burn.
London
July 7th
2005
Saddam Hussein
my sister said: save me the eyes
for a pair of earrings, & Martino
our blind neighbour, bagged the guts
Piedad Bonnett
Since Tilsit’s raft two centuries are pass’d,
My, all has been remarkable sithen,
They thought that peace, now peace settles at last
Upon the warring winter-time of men;
Saddam Hussein
Face melting with the snows,
By Allied justice slain, the doors of Janus close.
Tho’ conflictions still haunts Iraq
This hanging symbolizes
The age of Mars, tied in a sack
With all his crude disguises,
Then toss’d upon the Potomac,
Drowning with the Kaisers –
So, this is the way that the World Wars die,
Not with a bang, nor whimper… but a sigh.
How many fought? How many died?
Man’s future to secure,
Tyrants defied by lands allied
Made living lives more pure,
Far from those ravages of war our ancestors endure.
Baghdad
December
2006
(AA): Canto 71: Parnassus
********************************
The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a question in either language thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud because my voice fails me
George Gissing
Fresh Finales
Let these be thoughts for Adam’s race;
To me they do not seem untrue;
Men for a time may know their place
Muireadach Albanach
Shaking Calliope from her slumbers
I took a bag of books up to the park,
Late summer sun lit those random numbers
At any given one of them many spark;
Some word obscure,
Some sweet, well-metered line,
Hot drops of poesy pure to aid mine art’s design
From Nether Stowey balladry
To Virgil in translation,
Thro’ Rilke’s Orphic sonnetry
To Spender’s generation,
How many notions bloom’d in me,
Groom’d by transcraetion…
& now Lucretious & the Tempest lie
Preganant with possibilities nearby.
As when th’entowr’d Lady Jane
Scratch’d poesy with a pin,
From Autumn’s rain I’ll cross the main,
Unleash the coil within
& tour, once more, the Roman shore, Muse let the
games begin!
Edinburgh
September
2008
Italy
We are shining stars,
each a light unto ourselves,
yet bound together
Larry Schug
An age of freedom, long after the fall
Of liberty, in Italy, my song
Prepares its lyre, tightens its strings, sets stall
With poets of the sweeter chimes among;
Poi… Adesso!
Giro d’Italia,
Arquata del Tronto, where Tony Loffreda,
A man of eighty-seven years,
Such a wonderful tale did tell,
Of how a Scotsman dissapears
From the German hounds & yell,
At last the Gustav line appears
To break their trickster spell,
Now Jack McShiel stands tall, ‘Hugo’ no more,
Hugs his young friend & gallumphs back to war.
I, too, embraced that man so good ,
For he was still alive,
I stopp’d & stood in Dante’s wood,
Approaching thirty-five,
To share Tony’s affection for the world
which he did strive.
Ascoli Piceno
September
2008
Compositions
Outwardly, I enjoy wine, women and song.
And inwardly I work for the benefit of all beings.
Outwardly, I live for my pleasure
Drukpa Kunley
From Santa Catarina up the coast,
I sent my silent thoughts out to the day,
These are the moments Muses love the most
When shell-murmuring cauldrons come to play;
Euterpe first
Shall leave a lyric there,
To ease my rambling thirst for all the world to
share.
Finding fairest pharie abode
Of delicious asphodels,
As if my younger poet strode
Thro’ the woods by Tunbridge Wells,
Still trundling on in tryptych mode
To form my Book of Kells,
From engineering & endurance carv’d,
An inimitable instance unstarv’d!
Upon the cliff, high over sea,
Some fisherboat below,
My thought flies free, pure melody,
Thro’ poesy’s pantings flow,
Beneath the slanting Torre Santa Maria dell’Alto
Puglia
September
2008
Ascending Parnassus
Fireflies weaving aërial dances
In fragile rhythms of flickering gold,
What do you know in your blithe, brief season
Sarojini Naidu
Leaving Brindisi, Diomedes sire,
I sail’d for Hellas on a busty breeze,
To where Xerxes & Persia’s proud empire
Defiled upon the Isle Pelopponese;
Thro’ night we swept,
‘Til Dawn in purpling robes
About Lefkadi crept with gold, dust-finger’d probes.
At Sami Bay we mused & moor’d –
Silver-tongued Odysseus
Built here his famous multi-floor’d
Pillar’d pearl of palaces –
& further down the coast restor’d
The sea-cove of Phorcys!
On such stuff we Litologists depend,
To serve our pens when versifyings end.
I wander’d on in melody,
With notebook, fruit & pen,
Lidoriki, Galaksidi,
Itea’s olive glen,
& on up to Parnassus, yonder Chrissos town, &
then…
Delphi
September
2008
Parnassus
But you
Went on writing postcards. For days I rhymed
Talismans of power, in cynghanedd
Ted Hughes
Ye Bards! this is what sunset should look like
From Delphi, blood-orange, immaculate,
I urge on thee come take this healthy hike
Up to the trench where Pegasus placed foot;
Come curb your thirst!
This Castalian Spring
Shall make ye poet first, & then a druid-king!
But only if ye persevere
Thro’ twenty years of training,
Sing lyrics when the skies are clear,
Write renku when them raining,
Embrace the decades full austere,
Ever be abstaining,
From all the crude distractions of a life,
Whose only succor comes with thy true wife!
Deem women, where the Muses dwell,
Heart, twinkle, touch & trust,
Art’s dewy dell more musty cell
When lusting them non-plussed,
My love lies with me as I write, without her I am dust!
Delphi
September
2008
Culminations
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through his native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty
Lord Byron
Parnasso now – body, mind & soul –
A promise made indecadent before,
When Calliope wove vortical squall
While Clio taper’d arrows for World War;
An oracle,
A phantasy, a dream –
Yon Arachova’s hill I stepp’d across the stream,
Gently passing wild sparagmos
Which the maenads madly gorge,
Beside nymphaean thyiados
For the higher slopes feet forge,
Where juicy orgies soak’d the moss –
For England & King George
I plant myself upon the pointed steep,
Some Wallace on a bleeding Saxon Heap.
Just Aborigenes who see
Jasmin Valencia,
Could ever be this close to me,
Burnley’s Che Guevera,
Whom on a pittance tour’d the world to sing its
aria!
Mount Parnassus
September
2008
Dance of the Muses
Only the things touched
by the love of other things
have a voice
Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão
As the Beatles, however circumspect,
Together only won a nation’s hearts
& total televisual effect
Comes from a congregation of its parts;
My Muses nine
Hold hands in merry ring,
& I, sipping my wine, as, at the beginning…
She dons the mask of comedy,
She holds a globe & compass,
Two lyre a tender melody,
Euterpe wields her aulos,
Wearing a veil, Melopmene,
Fills the air with pathos,
Clio translating scrolls from ancyent days
While Calliope floats on sacred lays.
From Heaven Lord Apollo drifts,
With Mercury mid-flow,
The moment shifts, Euterpe lifts
Us onto sandall’d toe,
As one we fly oer mountains high, the mortal
world below.
Eubea
September
2008
Deities
Eagles & isles & unaccompanied things
The self-reliant isolated things
Release my soul, embrangl’d in the stress
Wilfrid Gibson
I landed me beside a gorge of green
& greys & beige in rugged rock ingrain’d,
Beholden to a beauty rarely seen,
Aeromancy momentary obtain’d;
Where silver lines
Swept ‘cross the snowy tops,
Below those hoary pines to roaring water drops.
I saw the twelve Olympians
Resume their former glories,
Mars & his rude centurions
Are banish’d to old stories,
Satanus & his minions
Beaten, & what’s more is,
Their dark endeavours ever put away,
The celebrating Gods before me play.
This hymnographic psaltery
Was slowly pass’d among
The company, a symphony
Of poetry & song,
Sing Plato, Aristophones & Xenophon along!
Mount Olympus
September
2008
Orpheanics
Look at a scorpion; it is attractive and tender,
Touch it and examine, it is too interesting.
Its ancestors are older than mammoth
Azim Suyun
All afloat thro’ rootless modernity,
Ilmarinen’s anchors of intension
I’ve plung’d into this vast posterity,
Found everything frozen in suspension;
This bardic art
Both past & future sees,
As summit mistlings part, gyr falcons drink the breeze.
I climb’d the mountain fast & free,
Funambulistic sailing,
Upon the peak-caps turn’d to see
The universe unveiling,
Futures luteus flew to me,
Visions uncurtailing,
Of Nostradamianical content
Mimesi messianical frequent.
Actions, places, names & dates,
Bejimbling in a dream
Of allied states, of psyche’s gates,
This is the saffron stream,
Hu preaching on a Pendragon thro’ star-fleec’d snorts of steam.
Mount Olympus
September
2008
Mumble Words 